AI and ML
With GPT-Live, talking, listening, and formulating answers all happen at once
OpenAI has released a new voice model that can produce human-sounding speech, or scour the web in response to spoken queries.GPT-Live, according to the company, makes chatbot banter feel more like a real conversation, something of a bold move for a company battling multiple lawsuits alleging mental health harms because people took ChatGPT too seriously."During conversations, GPT‑Live can show it’s paying attention with phrases like 'mhmm' or 'yeah', engage in quick back-and-forth, or just stay quiet when you need a moment to think," the company said in a blog post. "The result is a voice experience that is refreshingly easy to talk to."
The company has published a video demonstrating this full duplex experience. It features three women of an age seldom seen at companies like OpenAI but often impacted by the kinds of scams AI technology enables.
OpenAI insists that it has expanded its safety testing regime to better assess native audio interactions. And it has published a system card to document its approach.While OpenAI notes that it has policies and protections against voice cloning and impersonation, the company has not disavowed replicating a competing product from former CTO Mira Murati.Murati's company Thinking Machines in May talked up "interaction models" and how they can speak, listen, and search the web at the same time. Two months later, OpenAI has a similar offering.If Apple were involved, we'd say Thinking Machines had been "Sherlocked," a term from a time when copying a startup's product stirred indignation. We'd suggest "Altmanned" as an alternative if it weren't for the global shrug of indifference to frontier model companies capturing the world's intellectual output, laundering it, and reselling it.
